Does The Athletic still sponsor MGoBlog?

He's got a point.  Now the Online State University folks will agree that we shall examine every person involved with either football program and either athletic department for the smallest violation or irregularity, with the assistance of all law enforcement tools that exist, and enact maximum NCAA punishments for each violation, correct?

Buh buh but Stewart Mandel is an osu troll!

Would anyone who read this blog the last week sponsor it?

I am still laughing about Brian thinking he knows more about being an OC than Al Borges, myself.

He is reading Brian's work so there is that, which by the way, is always 10X better than anything The Athletic puts out.  

The shoe untying thing is just funny to me.  In most instances under a pile, guys would try to twist your ankle off (see Tom Gholston for example).  While they got caught and got a 15 yd penalty, don't lose sight of the shitty things other teams do in those piles. 

I mean, I cringed a bit with the whole "we care about school" point of that article.  At the same time, it's pretty telling that the most negative thing they can find about Michigan football on the academic side is an article for over a decade ago about athletes being directed towards easier programs, something nobody should be surprised by.  

And while I think graduation rates aren't the best measure of academic success, Michigan has a 5-year graduation rate in the mid 80s while OSU has one in the mid 60s, which is one of the worst in the conference.  APR, which is what people tend to cite, is just about keeping guys eligible, which is easier if you have sham classes and the like.  Hence why Clemson and OSU have about the same or better APR as Vandy, Stanford, and GT

Stewart is right. That game recap column was cringe worthy. 

Fuck Mandel.

This is the society we live in - everybody is quick to judge who loses a game; but nobody cares to evaluate who is doing the best job of growing kids into adults, rounding out their skill sets to succeed in the future, etc.

If Mandel cared, he could investigate the programs and evaluate this.  He doesn’t.  People just want the easy hit piece.

I can say with certainty that Michigan football players attend class, because as an alum I took many classes with football players.  Their work ethic was better than mine.

I don’t give a fuck about minimum NCAA compliance standards- having Fields not start any classes until 10/3, and then have them only be online courses is not serving him well.  People talk about how the NCAA takes advantage of players because they don’t get paid.  Well one sure-fire way to do so is to remove focus from their academic pursuits which is their fall back when they don’t make it to the NFL or retire from the NFL.  Justin Fields deserves better.

Firstly, this guy needs to get back to hosting his game show with the suitcases.

Secondly, ignoring the rank and file special teams/walk on types that graduate and become everyday joes, which team's 2 deep would you rather hire from?

Because untying a player's shoes is somehow connected with corruption?

The nice thing about the internet is that everyone has a platform. But if appearing in print made you smart. . .

Brian said the Harbaugh “change” was because he might have CTE. He’s clearly   not beyond reproach. 

Yeah, but just wait until Stew needs a new mattress recommendation!

Mandel is an OSU slappy.  I don’t blame him for firing back at Brian and others but I can’t help but notice that he doesn’t really defend OSU while doing so.  “Well, you probably cheat too.” is his retort?   He’s admitting that OSU cheats.  

Ah, Stew fights a lazy take with a lazier take. Good job, Stew.

As Bronx mentioned, pulling out the ten year old AA News hit job as evidence is a testament to how hard it is to actually find evidence that Michigan is stooping to the levels of OSU.

I'm old too, Stew. I'm old enough to remember how Jim "Holier Than Thou" Carty crowed that Michigan's outrage at Harbaugh's comments brought on this investigative journalism hit piece.

Even if we grant that Lloyd Carr was running a skeezy program, doesn't this only further prove Brian's point? We had our best success with our dirty program and now we've reformed, in particular under Harbaugh who indirectly brought on the AA News hit piece, and can't get over the hump.

Two things can be true.

1. The post game column had some holes and wasn't the greatest look I've seen.

2. Mandel has had a consistent snarky anti-Michigan and Harbaugh angle for at least 5 years. He occasionally admits it, but it hasn't stopped him from being relatively unprofessional when it comes to Michigan. It's too bad because I like the Athletic and the Audible Podcast, but it's a weak spot in Mandel's resume. 

It's interesting the different lenses we all use to see the world.

I didn't read Brian's article as "whining" about how they cheat and we don't.  I saw him basically lamenting the fact that the "rules" are so vague, ill defined, and unevenly enforced that one competitor is holding itself back out of some notion of "righteousness" that is clearly no longer important, or even valid, while the other is maximizing every possible advantage to win.  One is clinging to the "spirit" of a student/athlete model that is outmoded while the other has embraced the new reality of an expanded definition of what "winning within the rules" means. 

OSU doesn't CHEAT and Brian never said that.  OSU has taken a clear-eyed look at the current college football landscape, assessed just how far they can go as it relates to recruiting, bagmen, class time, the importance of grades, time devoted to the sport, etc. and they have identified how to maximize all of that while still staying within the rough parameters the NCAA has set.  Plus, they're willing to take their medicine if they get busted because the threat of an NCAA penalty carries very little weight when the upshot is unparalleled success on the field.

Being a "football factory" used to be a term of derision.  Nick Saban turned it into a point of pride.  Clemson and Ohio State have seen the use of taking that perspective and are maximizing it.  Schools that don't come around to that way of thinking are going to continue to get dusted until something happens to change that paradigm.  It is all about recruiting right now.

This is a lazy, weak, effort by Mandel. Not saying I agree with everything Brian said, but Mandel is basically saying “I did no actual research for this article, but no one can 100% prove every athlete in their program is a good student therefore no one can say OSU being a non-academic, pay-to-play, semi-pro factory is a realistic reason for them having better players”.  Why is the burden of 100% proof on the the program that is trying to maintain some academic integrity? I can say with 100% certainty that chase young cheated by taking a ‘loan’ from a ‘family friend’. 
 

The shoe untying thing is such a stupid “blah blah” I can’t hear you line it makes him sound like a huge DBag. Ok, so two M players do something dumb on the field. Therefore, OSU blatantly cheating for a decade is OK. Got it. This really is just a political message board piece. Reminds me of the logic and reasoning I hear after turning on MSNBC or Foxnews. No one is saying OSU didn’t win the football game.

Except for the fact that almost all of the major points in Jim Carty's academics series were pretty easily refuted by doing something as easy as reading the university website or looking at the academic calendar's add/drop dates.

That stuff was debunked within days, and here Mandel is talking about it again over a decade and three coaches later.

Jim Carty was then flushed out of journalism and is now a lawyer.

And another thing!

Baumgardner, post-OSU, pointed out that even if we entered a world where bagmen are legal, where we acknowledge openly that it's professional football, will Michigan (the institution) have the stomach to be part of that or just fall further behind and ultimately go the way of U of Chicago?

It's an excellent question without an answer at the moment. But the point that it can even be pondered completely proves Brian's point and contradicts Stew's.

No one questions what OSU's decision would be.

I was pretty embarrassed to come on here earlier this week and read Brian's take on The Game. We didn't lose that game because Justin Fields takes his classes online and our guys actually *gasp* physically walk into a classroom; we lost that game because our program has failed to evolve along with the rest of college football over the last 20 years.

If you've ever seen M. Night Shyamalan's film "The Village," that is Michigan's football program. A group of influential boomer donors who were raised on Bo Schembechler - and as a result, have a raging boner for Manball - have strived to keep the program stuck firmly in the 1900s. Meanwhile, the folks in Columbus have been busy making competent football decisions and adapting to a rapidly changing landscape.

Say what you will about cheating in the SEC, because that is a real thing, but we don't have a shred of evidence that sort of thing is going on in Columbus outside of their minor brush with the law in 2010. It is shameful to even hint at it, and downright embarrassing to do so in the wake of that straight-up beating in the Big House. "Ohio State hired an icky coach." "Their quarterback takes online classes." "They don't play school." These are the words of a perennial loser, content to smile submissively at the superior program until it is out of earshot, and then start mumbling to his friends about how "we're better than that" and "that's not who we are."

When Jim Harbaugh got to Michigan, he was seen as a Messiah because the boomer donors considered him a deity, yet he had shown the ability with the 49ers to run an innovative read-option offense. Philosophically, he could move Michigan's outdated, plodding offense into the future without encountering the resistance Rich-Rod seemed to face at every turn. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future - Jim Harbaugh came to Michigan seemingly content to live in the past.

Harbaugh underestimated how much the college game changed in his absence. He came back hellbent on building the same bruising offense that brought him a measure of success at Stanford. He finally admitted defeat after last season. Only now do we have an offense that is becoming capable of competing with Ohio State in 2019 instead of the 1989 version of the Buckeyes. Moreover, Don Brown's defense seems to spend each season shoring up glaring weaknesses exposed by Ohio State the year before only to have new ones exposed when The Game rolls around again. We live behind the curve.

The point here is we aren't behind Ohio State because of the scandal that led to Tressel's firing in 2010. In fact, that was a golden opportunity we failed to seize upon because we had just hired a Bo Schembechler impersonator as our head coach and charged him with the task of taking our offense back to the 1980s. We aren't behind Ohio State because Urban Meyer mishandled the Zach Smith situation. In fact, that indirectly led to Meyer leaving, which opened up another golden opportunity we seem well on our way to squandering.

The truth is we're lagging behind our rival because Ohio State has spent the last 20 years evolving, properly evaluating and developing talent and executing in big games while we've spent the better part of the past 20 years living in the past and making excuses when things don't go our way. While Ohio State's methods may fall outside what you're comfortable with ethically, by and large, Ohio State has been operating within the guidelines of NCAA rules. 

When Harbaugh was asked a legitimate question about the gaping abyss that separates his program and Ohio State, he said he wouldn't answer such an insult. I'll answer for him. In reality, what fills the expanding space between the two programs is a sea of excuses, miscues and hard-headedness. The sad thing is that a segment of our fanbase rationalizes it all by chalking up failure as the price you pay for taking the high road.